Good Monday morning.  It’s a dreary day here in North Carolina, it’s a great day to be behind my keyboard trying to catch up on many things (orders, galleries, emails).  First I want to thank all of you who have sent me emails, text or messages about my sickness.  (I am being treated for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever) I have been overwhelmed with your encouragement and your patience!  I hate being sick, more than that, I hate being at the point where I feel like I can’t even move!  I did manage a few sessions this weekend, but crashed the rest of it!  I’m hoping that these meds will kick in quickly and I’ll be back to my normal self shortly!

A few personal things:  We celebrated my husband birthday yesterday…I can’t tell you how blessed I am!  I have to brag a bit!  Yesterday was the kick off of the Redskins season (if you follow this blog, you will know I’m a HUGE fan) so…when he was up in the DC area last month, he bought me a jersey (my first NFL jersey) that in itself was such a sweet gesture, but this is the thing that melted my heart.  After giving it to me, I sent a pic to my sister and she replied “he was so excited about giving that to you..he said my birthday will be the best birthday ever!”  That in a nutshell describes my husband…always selfless..thinking of me (and others) the fact that he thought that giving me something that he knew I would love, would make his birthday the best…sigh!  I have a keeper!

MOTHERchild project sessions for tomorrow are still on!  I will make it through!

Fall Family Sessions:  I’m booking quickly!  It’s crazy to me how fast this fall will fly by and before we know it we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas!  If you are at all interested in a fall family session, please email me as soon as you can!

Switching gears for a moment!

Storytelling!  So much of what we do as photographers is capture moments (in fact it’s all we do) but sometimes we have the privledge of capturing a story!  Sometimes those stories can be long, like a wedding lasting several hours, or sometimes they can be just a few seconds, but either way, the goal is to send the client and the viewer right back to that moment..and hopefully bring up not only memories but also emotions.  Storytelling is not easy, it usually means that you have to wait out a moment and keep shooting.  So if you are interested in capturing a few more stories, here are a few tips (by the way, I am NOT a lifestyle photographer..there are so many great ones out there) but I do love incorporating a few of these images in all my sessions.

• Be patient!  It takes times to find these moments, you can’t force them, you have to let them happen.
• Shoot past when you would normally shoot:  What do I mean by that? I mean, often we capture “the shot” and then we think I’m done…but for these moments, you need to keep shooting…it’s then that you capture the true connections and stories
• Editing plays a huge part!  You want to make sure that your focus is on the story, edit out things that don’t matter to the story so that your focus is on the subjects
• Vantage points are important:  Often a story is much more powerful if you change your angles and vantage points.  If you are taking a picture of kids playing checkers, then put you camera down on the level of the board (this happend this weekend with a friend of my sons) If you want to get your kids playing, hop up on a ladder and shoot from above, you will see that your story might be much more powerful.
• Often you need a series:  There are times when one single image will tell a story (that is every photographers dream) but often you need several and that’s okay!  Be willing to take those several and present them as a story!

Here are some of my favorite “stories” from this summer!